


whispers on a haunted wind

by Jade_Sabre



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dragon Age Quest: Here Lies the Abyss, Family, Gen, Here Lies the Abyss Fix-it Fic, Protective Siblings, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 11:19:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8443864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/pseuds/Jade_Sabre
Summary: Amid the chaos of DA:I, Thistle and Carver Hawke travel together and attempt to make a little sense out of the wreckage of their past lives.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [Jilly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jillyfae/pseuds/jillyfae) prompted me "Thistle & Isabela, Inquisition-timeline-wise?" and this is what she gets.
> 
> This is a sketch, or maybe a scrap, of what would be a longer fic if I had the time to work on it, but it is nevertheless an important part of my headcanon regarding "Here Lies the Abyss" and I'm grateful to have had the prompting to work on it even a little bit. The gist of the fic is that basically while wandering around Thistle runs into Carver’s group of Grey Wardens, and after some consternation he invites her to come along to Orlais. They hear Clarel's mad blood magic plan, team up with Loghain, realize the Calling is fake, get Varric’s letter, and send Loghain to Skyhold while Thistle drags Carver to a cave in the middle of nowhere to sit the whole thing out. This particular pair of moments takes place on the boat, and then later when they're traveling across Ferelden to reunite with Loghain in Crestwood. In neither instance are they yet aware of the whole Corypheus thing.
> 
> I wrote this to listening to bettydice‘s [beautiful fanmix for Thistle](http://8tracks.com/bettydice/thistle-1) and also ended up pulling out [“when i go”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2360003) because. you know. And there's a bit of a side reference to [this ficlet](http://jadesabre301.tumblr.com/post/111727522484/carvermerrill-24-38) I wrote ages ago, but it's not necessary.
> 
> As always, thank you to Quark for her fabulous beta, and thanks to _you_ for reading. :-)

“Who would have thought,” Carver says, staring out the tiny porthole, “that ten years later we’d be holed up on a miserable ship in terrible weather, crossing the Waking Sea?”  
  
Hawke snorts.   
  
“Something about it, though,” he says, the grey light off the churning sea turning his skin an ashen color.  “Coming full circle.”  
  
“It’s never that simple,” she says, leaning against the hull of the ship, her feet cramped against a crate as she stretches her legs before her.  “Coming full circle just means you’re beginning again.”  
  
His feet dance with the rocking of the ship, though the rest of him barely moves.  “Then where are we going this time?”  
  
“Not Kirkwall,” she says, and he snorts in turn.  
  
“Already an improvement, then.”  He finally looks away from the sea, back towards her.  He’s still pale; ten years ago, he’d been valiantly retching in a bucket when he thought no one was paying attention.  She’d pointed it out to him then, determined in her own grief to quash any bravado he might have had, failing to see it was his way of mourning, too.  “Have you sailed much since you left?”  
  
“No,” she says, crossing her ankles.  “Before coming to Hercinia I don’t think I’d spoken to another person in six months.”  
  
He’s quiet for a moment, and then another, stretching into minutes; she doesn’t mind the silence, though it’s not a comfortable one and she knows the whole point of being together is to talk, to try to piece together something that maybe never existed at all.  And then he turns his face to the sea again and says, “Well, then.  I’ll quit bothering you.”  
  
She lets the silence fill with the sound of the waves beating against the hull, the creak of the wood and the strained tension from the knots, the shift of his boots against the deck, and then she says, “You’re just trying to keep your mouth shut so you won’t throw up.”  
  
“Mm,” is all the reply he gives, and she leaves it be.

 

* * *

 

 

They don’t travel well together, not at first, each too used to traveling alone and unburdened to adjust easily to sharing the responsibilities of fire and food and waking watchfulness.  And they each have their own routines and foibles, though at least in these remain the ghosts of the ones they possessed when they left Lothering.  He still makes the same face when he shaves, one eye squinting, tip of the tongue barely poking out the side of his mouth; he comments that she still blows on her first spoonful of porridge three times, regardless of how long it’s sat waiting for her.  She supposes he’s right, though when she stops to think about it she inevitably loses count and it _bothers_ her if she’s off.  She’d thought she’d outgrown such habits and idly wonders how many other holdovers she keeps in the cobwebbed corners of her mind.  He still takes the occasional surreptitious step onto a crunchy leaf when he thinks she’s not looking.  
  
(Bethany would have stepped on every one, and laughed when her twin scolded her about making too much noise, and for the first time in a long time she feels the echoes of the old grief as she sees the same memory in his eyes.)  
  
They stop in Redcliffe, and a day later he goes for the flask at his side and finds it missing.  She doesn’t let him turn back for it, and he doesn’t speak to her for two days.  
  
They have time; they make their way across the Hinterlands, coming across more terrorized farmers than Hawke cares to count and, more rarely, apostates and rogue templars engaged in battle.  They avoid confrontation as much as possible and make short work of the fighting when it occurs; Carver cleans his blade in silence while Hawke kicks over the remains of a charred robe over here, a bisected breastplate there.  She finds she has little taste for looting, even as her fingers instinctually comb through coin purses and run along blades and staves, testing enchantments.  She hadn’t realized just how much she hasn’t missed this life, and part of her is annoyed with Carver for dragging her into it; another part is annoyed with herself for following him; but the final, deepest part of her falls back into habits she hasn’t needed in years and is relieved to know he is near because she’ll _know_ , one way or another.  
  
They can’t avoid Lothering, not without going too far out of their way, but by unspoken accord they stay far from the edges of their homestead.  The land is not so tainted, Carver says, as they’d heard, but it’s clear that neither has anyone made any particular effort to see if anything will grow.  Someone’s rebuilt the core of the town into a respite for traders, and a few of the buildings are at least vaguely recognizable as being in more or less the same spot; but the town they’d known is gone, and they pass by the inn without stopping.  
  
North of town, as they stop for the night and Hawke lights the fire with the touch of a finger to the pile of sticks she’s assembled, Carver says, “That was creepy.”  
  
“We knew it was gone,” she answers, sitting back on her haunches, feeling an ache in her knees that hadn’t been there a decade ago.  
  
“I know,” he says, but there’s a strain in his voice and she waits for him to, in typical Carver fashion, explode with whatever’s on his mind.   
  
Instead he stares at the fire, and then says, “You said you haven’t spoken with anyone in six months?”  
  
“Something like that,” she says.  “I don’t keep track.”  
  
“And the silence doesn’t drive you mad?”  He’s almost making a joke of it, but something falls flat.  
  
She snorts anyway.  “I’ve heard enough talking for lifetimes,” she says, taking a stick from the pile next to her and feeding the fire.  It will need logs eventually, but for now she gives him the illusion of it being a natural fire while she gives herself the opportunity to release her magic.  Just as Father taught her, those first few lessons, making fire—the easy part—and then controlling it, learning to contain it, making it and holding its shape and size and ferocity without wavering for hours.  Tempering the flame, without extinguishing it.  Self-control is the first step towards power, and a mage’s greatest protection against herself.  She can control the flame.  She can control herself.  Just as Father taught her.  
  
She wonders, not for the first time, what his life held, to turn her mother’s tales of the dashing court magician into the somber bearded crossed-arms figure of her childhood.  But she also knows, without asking, and she wonders if he would be proud of her, or if he’d mourn her life as much as her mother had.  
  
She’s had these thoughts before, of course, but the flamelight dancing in Carver’s eyes—Mother’s eyes—casts shadows on her wondering, letting ghosts of memories creep into the edges with their own pains and sorrows and regrets, tugging echoes from her heart that she’s long since put to rest.  It’s not—hurt, exactly, but it settles like the ache in her bones and stays to be endured, one way or another.  
  
Finally he says, “Then I won’t—”  
  
“Carver,” she says, more gently than she thinks she’s ever said it, and for a moment she tastes Mother’s voice on her lips.  
  
He too looks as though he’s seen a ghost, and the words come tumbling out:  “I saw Merrill.”  
  
“Merrill,” she says, surprised, the name almost unfamiliar.  “Where?”  
  
He shrugs, one hand half-gesturing beyond.  “Out,” he says.  “Near Nevarra, maybe.  Traveling from one place to another.”  Hawke waits, but he takes a stick from her pile and pokes the fire nervously.  
  
“What was she doing?” she asks finally.  
  
“Looking for a mirror.  I think,” he says, as she snorts and sits back for the long haul, stretching her legs out to the side, releasing her hold on the fire so that it dances as he gives it a particularly hard poke.  “She says she destroyed the one she used to have, but there are more.”  
  
“Wonderful,” Hawke says, almost surprised by the trace of real anger she hears in her own voice.  “It’s so wonderful to know she hasn’t learned how to leave the past where it belongs.”  
  
Carver answers with a snort of his own, retreating from the fire, resting his arms on his drawn-up knees.  “I’ll be honest, I didn’t understand half of what she was telling me.  Something about elu-somethings, and the Dread Wolf, and magic, and being so glad—”   
  
He stops, but even in the flickering firelight she can see the blush rising on his cheek, and she _realizes_ —“You saw her,” she repeats, layering the words with questions and insinuations as only a former viscount with Seneschal Bran’s training can.  
  
“She shared her campfire with me,” he says, defensively, but his ears are definitely red and there’s a softness to the memory in his eyes.  He still hasn’t learned to guard himself, not fully, her little brother, and the air in her lung suddenly stings like the first morning breath at the summit of the Sundermount, cold and biting and sweet.  He scuffs the dirt at his feet with the toe of his boot and says, abruptly, “I always liked her.  Everyone knew that.”  
  
“That was ten years ago,” she says, obviously.  
  
He ignores her.  “Mother used to mention her in her letters, to tease me, I think, but sometimes it was something she’d asked Mother to include, since Mother’s letters had a way of finding me when no one else’s could...”  And then he looks at her and says, “You never wrote.”  
  
“Merrill never asked me to,” she says, but now her gaze drops to the fire as it eagerly devours the kindling.  She reaches for a log, the better to avoid his gaze, and says, “I didn’t have much to say.”  But even that’s not enough, and as she settles the log on the fire she glances at him, quick enough for him to catch her honesty.  “I never had Mother’s talent for stories.  After she died, I didn’t know how to begin to try.”  
  
“So you didn’t,” he says.  
  
“I will remind you I had a city falling to pieces around my ears,” she says, not unkindly.  She should have written.  She didn’t.  
  
“Thanks to the apostate sharing your bed,” he retorts, an edge in his voice that seems to surprise him in turn.  
  
“Did Mother tell you that, too?” she asks, half-amused, leaving a memory of slender hands and blonde hair drifting across a strained face to rest, peaceful, in its grave.  
  
“Yes,” he says, with all the disgust of a younger brother forced to endure tales of his sister’s romantic exploits.  And then the disgust fades but the frown remains, and he says, “She worried about that.”  
  
“Rightly so,” Hawke says, though she’s surprised to hear it, surprised that Leandra might have suspected the truth of Anders’s condition, realized he was not simply _apostate_ but also _abomination_ —  
  
“No, I don’t think she thought he was going to blow up the Chantry,” Carver says, full of exasperated irony.  
  
“Was it that he didn’t eat enough?”  
  
“She worried about _you_ ,” Carver says, tone clearly indicating he thought her unworthy of the concern, though his face and words belie the sentiment.  “She wasn’t convinced he made you happy.  Something about you not smiling as often as you did when—”  
  
“I had no idea Mother was such a gossip about her own children, let alone _to_ them,” Hawke says.  “I swear she had more interesting things—” 

“You haven’t been to sea?” Carver asks, and for a moment, she doesn’t understand the question.  “You haven’t even looked?”  
  
The realization washes over her with a pirate’s laugh; she lets the wave recede to the horizon, and says, “Why would I?”  
  
He makes a noise of frustration.  “Look, everyone could see I was tripping over my tongue making myself a fool in front of Merrill,” he says.  “Just because you weren’t as obvious a blushing wreck with that pirate doesn’t mean you _weren’t_ one.  I mean, for you.”  He has a look of old distaste and confusion as he says, “I didn’t think you were even interested in anything other than books before she turned up.”  
  
“I wasn’t,” she says, frankly, and for a moment she misses the warmth in her cheeks, the glow of ale and firelight and twinkling dark eyes and lips curved in a smile, whispering in her ear; she misses being a girl again, flushed with flirtation and full of possibilities and free from the city that would link an iron chain around her neck.  They had been wretched and poor and insignificant; they’d had _choices_ , and they'd made them without any regard for anyone around them.  
  
That she has found herself free and choosing again does not diminish the weight of those years; she’ll never be that girl again.  That she was, for a time, is enough.

“Then why?” he asks, and she thinks it’s the first time anyone’s asked, really _asked_ , though to be fair she hasn’t spoken with anyone who would know in a long time and with anyone who would care in even longer.  “Everyone could see the mage staring at you, but you never seemed to care.  So why?  Why him?”  
  
She sighs a laugh for the foolish free girl she was, and says, “I looked at both of them, and I thought Isabela didn’t need me, and Anders did.  So I chose.”  
  
“And what did _she_ have to say about it?”  
  
She laughs again, self-deprecating.  “Nothing,” she says.  “I was right.  She didn’t need me; he did.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“And maybe I needed her,” she says, though at this distance she doesn’t know what that might have meant, “but I chose.”  
  
“And he went and blew up a city and started a war that’s still raging, two years later,” Carver says, though she thinks the anger in his voice is somewhat displaced; it isn’t _his_ war, after all.  
  
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t need me,” she says, and she can see that her calm is, as usual, infuriating him.  She tries not to laugh anew.  “It means I wasn’t enough.”  
  
He stares at her, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed, and she waits for the inevitable explosion.  “Don’t you have any _regrets_?”  
  
“And what good would those do?” she asks, and she suddenly feels an irrepressible urge to _explain_ , and whether it’s the silence of so many months or some long-buried sisterly desire to share her wisdom, she’s not sure.  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the only person I can control is myself.  I can’t control another’s decisions, and it’s certainly no use to torture myself for their mistakes.  All I have are my choices, and I made them as best as I could, trying to do the best I could.  How can I regret that?”  
  
“Right,” Carver says, heavy with the old chip on his shoulder.  “Because you never make mistakes.”  
  
“Of course I’ve made mistakes,” she says, exasperated and almost amused again but earnest, too, on the off chance that he’s really listening.  “But I tried my best.  I failed, but I tried.  Isn’t that all any of us are doing?”  She looks up to the sky, to the stars who have impassively listened to her ask the same question again and again, who in their silence have taught her the answer, have taught her the meanings of silence, and peace.  “What’s past is past.  You can’t return to it, and that’s all regretting is, really, an inability to move beyond a place you can’t reach.”  She looks back to him; his face is stone, his shoulders set, and she says, gentle in the only blundering way she can be, “If you spent all your time regretting becoming a Warden, what kind of Warden would you be?”  
  
He holds his tension for another moment; and then, “A damn poor one,” he says, blowing out his breath, “and I should know, because it’s how I spent the first two years.”  He runs a hand through his hair and says, “But I haven’t gotten any cities destroyed, or started any wars.”  
  
“Yet,” she says, and at his startled look she says, “The night is young, brother.”  
  
“No, thank you,” he says.  And then:  “I wonder if I should have stayed with her.”  
  
“But you didn’t,” she says.  
  
“No,” he says, staring into the fire again.  “I didn’t.”  
  
She looks back to the sky, leaving him to his thoughts as the ghosts creep from the firelight’s shadows to brush against the shadows of her fingers, the darkened line of her leg.  Their caresses had been gentle in life; they do not bother her in death.  A soft summer breeze ruffles through her hair; she sends it towards the sea with thoughts of smooth waters and clear skies, though she may never follow.  She has her memories, the girl she once was and the woman she is now; she has a brother, for better or worse; she has a destination, and a future that stretches beyond it, and the freedom to choose what it will be.  
  
The world owes her nothing, and yet offers her this; she needs nothing more.


End file.
